Project information

Bikes for better rural life in Zambia

This project will bring affordable, quality bikes to a rural community giving children better access to an education/school, giving local farming families the means to carry more crops to market, make farm work easier and support livelihoods.

Charity information: Re~Cycle

Need

Zambia is one of the poorest countries in the world and 90% of the Luansobe population area are subsistence farmers living in a sandy rural area where the humble bike is of great assistance. Transport and development go hand in hand - a bicycle radically reduces the time spent walking to school, work or gathering firewood or water and is often the only reliable form of transport on rough roads and narrow dusty tracks.

Solution

£33 will help Re~Cycle source, collect and provide a quality, unwanted bike from the UK to a farmer, school child or head of household in Luansobe via our project parners Kaloko Trust.

In 2014 3.6 million new bikes were sold in the UK…there are many thousands of bikes which go to waste in the UK left in a shed sat unused.

The bikes are a hand up not a hand out and will be sold by the Kaloko Trust at modest prices to rural villagers. The bikes sell quickly and there is always demand

Impact

Once someone has invested in a bike of their own we have found that they often look after it and it can last for years. We are making sure that the local bike repairers in the community have better bike repair skills which will contribute to the longevity of the bikes we send. Stories from Zambia have shown that people, for example, save money using their bikes: instead of paying for public transport they cycle and save money which they often spend on improving farming work

Risk

We may encounter a problem with customs and getting the bikes into Zambia, although this is low risk and we have experience of sending bikes to Zambia.

The other risk is that we saturate the local area with too many bikes however we have seen no evidence of this and in fact the bikes sell very quickly.

Reporting

We will send stories and photos of individuals who have a bike demonstrating how they have benefited. We also want to provide data about bike usage across a larger group of people. Were also very keen for donors to come to see how we work at our bike warehouse in Colchester, Essex

Beneficiaries

Why Us?

Re~Cycle has been sending bikes to Africa since 1997 and in 2016 we will have seen our 80,000th be rescued for a new life in Africa. So far we’ve reached nearly half a million people.

We’ve learnt a lot about which bikes work well and serve communities best. We also train mechanics so that our project partners grow local repairs resources meaning that the bikes we send will last as long as possible. We also send spare parts and tailor each shipment to the needs of our partners.